Oat Bars, Second Attempt

Today's oat pulp went into another batch of granola bars. Following the same recipe, sort of, but with more oats to make it a little drier and different mix-ins:

1 ½ cup old-fashioned rolled oats
½ cup cane sugar
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
½ cup oat milk
1 cup oat pulp
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup chopped pecans
¼ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup pepitas

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8-inch square pan with parchment paper hanging over the edge.
In a medium bowl, combine the dry ingredients including the rolled oats, sugar, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
In another large bowl, combine the wet ingredients including the eggs, milk, oat pulp and vanilla extract. Transfer the dry ingredients over the wet ingredients and set aside until flavors blend, about 20 minutes.
Fold in the pecans, pepitas and cranberries, and spread combined mixture into prepared square pan.
Bake in the preheated oven until edges are golden brown, about 30-35 minutes. Allow to cool on wire rack for 5 minutes before slicing. Cut into 8 bars, place on baking sheet and return to the oven at 225˚F for another 30 minutes. Turn off the oven and let the bars cool in the oven.

This definitely made them less sticky and more like the vision I have in my head for what they should be. The best part is once I get the proportions tweaked, I can change the mix-ins anytime based on what I have in the house.

Summer Has Begun

And the farm share is really plentiful!

Today I picked up the share: Napa cabbage, collard greens, kale, garlic scapes, daikon radishes, bok choi, Hakurei turnips, scallions, 2 heads of lettuce, 2 kohlrabi, cilantro, parsley, 1/2 pint of strawberries, "unlimited" fava beans and snow and snap peas (I only took a quart of snap peas and some favas, I'm not crazy), 1 quart of shelling peas, and rainbow chard. Some was set aside for my friend's half, and then I got to work.

I chopped the Napa cabbage, bok choi, daikon radishes and scallions and they are currently brining. Tomorrow I'll start them fermenting to make kimchee.

With the cilantro (1 large bunch) and garlic scapes (20) I made a pesto using toasted pecans (1 cup) and parmesan cheese (1/2 cup, maybe?) with salt, pepper, and some cayenne for zip. For dinner we had a salad with fresh peas, strawberries, turnips and lettuce and then cheese ravioli tossed with this pesto and some blanched fresh peas. Now I have three half-cup jars of pesto to put in the freezer for another time.

The fava beans were blanched and peeled and are now in a jar with some salt water. I didn't want to marinate them because I'm hoping to use them to make baghali polo; I'll grab some dill next week so I can make it.

Also, I picked a whole lot of mulberries off my tree, simmered them with water and ran them through the jelly bag to start getting juice for a batch of mulberry jelly. The tree is covered with berries so I hope only 2 or 3 more picking sessions will be enough. 

Day 27: More Viennoiserie

Last week when we each made a batch of croissant dough, we saved half of each batch for today. Danishes!

But first, we had to make more dough for tomorrow: four batches of croissant dough to make eight patons, and eight batches of puff pastry dough, and a single batch of brioche dough. So, in between making various danishes, we made all the turns for all our doughs and got them ready. Tomorrow there will be more croissants and some other fun things as well.

Then we got to work on the fillings for the danishes. We needed pastry cream, which was the base for the cheese danishes and the apricot ones, and a component of the pecan rolls (part remonce, part pastry cream). We also made a lemon filling.

Each danish was a different shape. The cheese ones were squares with the corners tucked in. The apricot danishes were pinwheels. The raspberry ones were bear claws and the lemon ones were little baskets. Some of the lemon ones had raspberries on them and others did not. The pecan rolls involved strips of dough with the filling, twisted and then rolled into snails. Everything was proofed, washed with egg wash, baked and then glazed or dusted with powdered sugar or both.

This week we didn't forget and with the scraps we made monkey bread.

Pie Crazy!

Tomorrow is the long anticipated family gathering and I've spent the last few days planning, wrapping, and baking.  Here's the finished products:

Apple, Pecan, and Chocolate Sweet Potato

The chocolate sweet potato pie came from this recipe but instead of using chocolate shavings, I mixed 2 oz of chocolate chips with the mashed sweet potatoes and then sprinkled mini chocolate chips on the top just before baking.  The pecan pie recipe came from here.  The maple candied bacon was made in 2 batches and crumbled so it will be ready to sprinkle on top.  I had a little, it was all I could do to not eat the whole thing.

After all the pies were made, I had enough leftover crust for 3 strawberry-rhubarb tarts (one was my breakfast...).

Later this afternoon, I will be trying to make venison meatballs for dinner.  Hopefully, yum!  I ended up buying uncured pancetta since the meat counter staff had never even heard of caul fat.

I Was WAY Off

If you had asked me to describe a new snack that my 9 year old would enjoy, the same child whom, over the years, has said no to just about everything, the words "raw," "vegan," and "gluten-free" would not have been in my vocabulary.

Who knew?

We were visiting a friend in Maine over the weekend.  She's a painter, and a raw food enthusiast who has created a home business selling raw, vegan, and organic snacks.  Elizabeth went to high school with my husband and ended up in Maine, learned how to paint, and started selling her artwork.  Her incredible talent and energy comes through every painting she does.  We have bought at least 10 paintings over the years and this most recent one we were picking up was a commissioned work for my boss, who retired last week.  Well, we showed up at her house and the kids were hungry.  She had her raw food wares on a table, ready for sale.  The next thing I know, the 9 year old has opened up a box of the Go Bananas cookies and was chowing down.  And LOVED it.  The 12 year old also ate some and, between the two of them, 6 cookies were gone in about 5 minutes.  Then they got to work on the fruit leathers and 2 of those were gone in a heartbeat.  Needless to say, the 9 year old didn't eat a whole lot of lunch, but even that was a vegan crepe with flax seeds and it went over well.  Before we left for home, I purchased another box of cookies, some kale chips (I like the mustard ones best), blueberry gRAWnola and a healthy supply of fruit leather.

Now, my diet is about as far from a raw food vegan diet as one can get.  And, I was under the impression that it was a lot of work.  Elizabeth convinced me otherwise, but it is mighty helpful to have a dehydrator and a food processor.  I have neither of these things, at the moment.  But, given how much the 9 year old liked those cookies, and how much I want that 9 year old to eat good food, and how healthy those cookies are, I decided to try our own version.

I took this recipe I found online, doubled it, and instead of almonds I used half pecans and half cashews.  As, I mentioned, I don't have a food processor, so the blending part was fairly difficult and likely took longer than it should have.  Dehydrating is also taking longer than it should have, since I'm using my oven.  I had them in a warm oven until I went to bed and then turned it off but left them in there.  This morning I have the oven on again, then will turn it off again when I leave and keep the cookies in there until I get home.  They are sticky.  But they look like cookies.  I set the 9 year old to unwrapping chocolate kisses and putting them in the middles of the cookies - we used the kisses to spread the batter flatter before we set the kiss in the middle.

Now I'm wondering, will this kid of mine be moving even more in this direction?  Am I going to have to learn to prepare more vegan entrees?  I will note that the kale chips were not a favorite, so maybe we're just going to have to pick and choose.